For those of you who do not read German, I have translated some points from that interview with Ingrid Lukas (see my previous post) for you:

… Singer Ingrid Lukas had once competed as a swimmer and dreamed of a life as a mermaid, she says, while her arms are rowing and she is maybe just freeing with her hands that space, which she referred to as “demi-monde”. …

Born in 1984 in Tallinn, Ingrid Lukas came with her mother to Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1994. The Estonian years were so influential that they reverberate in her music. She wrote songs reminding one of (hinted at?) Estonian folk songs, known as Reglilaul.

She can also talk lively about Estonia: about the dacha near the sea, where they spent the summer months; or of a paraplegic lady in the neighborhood, who told her tales for hours. And finally about the Estonian singing culture: Almost everyone sings in a choir; there are large choral competitions in which after several years of preliminary competitions finally thirty thousand singers are coming together. Singing had always been a central element of the Estonian and Baltic identity. This could be seen in August 1989, when millions of singing Balts formed a human chain and demonstrated for independence from the Soviet Union. “I was there, I did not understand the political background though; but I felt the great euphoria.”
The childhood memories of the singer are partly stressful. Encouraged by the parents, the talented child was five years old when she joined a music school where she not only experienced enthusiasm, but also the drill of classical music training under the banner of Soviet pedagogy. Quite early she took already courses in solfège, ear training and choral singing. Ironically, in the choir her wings were clipped so to say. “It was said that I was singing too loud, my voice would sound like a duck.” Now Ingrid Lukas smiles. But at that time she became silent: “For years I have not sung a sound.” ….